Suzie’s House 465 : Listening Closely

I’m Not Always Wrong played through the headset. Bruce braced himself. A lot of times when you listened to a recording it didn’t sound anything near as good as what you thought it was to start with.

It wasn’t too bad. He looked around. Everyone else was kind of deadpan. I wasn’t sure if they were hiding reactions, or just didn’t know enough to have one. Emma glanced at him with a little worried wrinkle in her forehead. He gave her a thumbs up.

The recording was good. Real good. They sounded real, like they were right there. Good equipment really did make a difference.

So what was the problem? The bind guy Miranda had hired to handle the sound equipment made it sound like they weren’t going to like what they heard. What wasn’t to like?

Then Emma’s voice came in. Loud. Ear-splitting loud. The sound guy had moved it down to the right decibels quickly, but that one or two seconds was enough to ruin the whole recording.

Then her voice faded out a bit, and again got fixed a second later. She must have moved away from the microphone. Bruce hadn’t even noticed it when they were recording.

Poor Emma. She’d gone pale. She knew she was the reason they couldn’t use the recording.

Just as Bruce thought that, a whole string of wrong notes came out of the synthesizer. Had he gotten too carefree in the middle of a recording? In a concert nobody would even notice, but this was going to be set in vinyl. Or at least the digital equivalent. That meant he’d have to listen to that string of wrong notes for the rest of his life.

He swore under his breath. Just then there was a twang from Tracy’s guitar and a follow up out of place thump on a cowbell from Justin making the recording just that tiny bit not so good. It was all of them. They all sucked!

Goosebumps rose all over his arms and shoulders. They were as good as they’d ever been. He couldn’t imagine them ever all playing perfectly every time. Was this whole album idea of his a total crock?

He swallowed hard. How was he going to face everyone else in the band? He could barely face it himself.

The song only ran three minutes long, but it felt like eternity. That whole time everyone stayed quiet. They all solemnly refused to break the ice as the sound stopped. The soundman was another matter.

“So, you all get it, right? I mean, it’s an okay recording. There’s a few things I can do with it still, but this is pretty much how it is. By the way, you guys are great. Just great. Are you really just in high shool?”

He didn’t wait for anyone to answer that.

“The problem is that to get rid of all the little… things. You know, where someone is too loud or something, or to splice in one piece in place of another, I kind of need to record each of you separately. But that takes a really long time. Personally, I’d be willing to do it for free, but I got to eat, too, you know.”

“Supper? You’d do it for supper?” Tracy’s eyes gleamed.

“If you’re thinking of offering Mrs. H’s food, don’t you think you should ask her first?” Gene glowered at her.

“She feeds extra people all the time. What’s one more?”

“That’s still just me,” the sound guy said. “I don’t own this studio. Miranda only rented it for a couple of hours. After that, someone else is coming in. We’d be lucky to one song done.”

“But at least it would be one really good song,” Bruce said to himself.

Apparently everyone heard him, because they all turned toward him like he was a some kind of beacon or something.

“L! L-l-l-let’s do it!”

If Emma sounded that enthusiastic, then there was no stopping the rest of them. Bruce hid his smile. He didn’t want to get blamed if it didn’t all work out.

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